✓ Awarded: 95 Points Wine Spectator (Issue October 31st, 2015)
Rocca di Montegrossi's Vin Santo is produced from Malvasia Bianca del Chianti, with the addition of about 5% Canaiolo. Malvasia Bianca is especially well suited to the production of this kind of wine thanks to its aromatic richness, the thickness of the skins of the grapes, and their propensity to oxidize.
The bunches of grapes are hung one by one on nets in a well-ventilated area under the rafters.
During this phase, the grapes are affected by noble rot, which confers distinctive, striking characteristics. Because of the rails, workers can shift the nets and work their way through the drying room removing grapes that have begun to deteriorate, an operation they carry out every 10 days until the pressing, which generally takes place in the January following the harvest.
At the end of this 3-4-month period the grapes are quite concentrated, with high sugar contents, and they are gently pressed. The must thus obtained goes into small casks (50 and 100 liters) of a variety of woods (cherry, oak, mulberry) in which it ferments and ages for a period of 6-7 years. The resulting wine is brilliant amber. On the palate it's velvety, with intense, complex, persistent apricot, dried fig, toasted almond, date and caramel aromas.
Thanks to its distinctive freshness and delicacy, it is an excellent meditation wine, though it will also work very well as a dessert wine. The Annual production is about 2,500 of 0.375 lt bottles, a tiny amount (the yield of grapes into wine is less than 10%). In other words, this wine is not made following commercial logic.
